"Hey," she said, "Didn't mean to wake you.""What're you doing? It's five in the morning."

"I er…have an errand to run before work," Tonks explained, pulling on her traveling cloak and walking over to the bed, "I'll only be gone till noon today."

"Okay," Ginny said as Tonks leaned down to kiss her, "Have a good morning."

NOMtW

Tonks walked up the dirt path toward the cemetery. It was the third time in two months that she had been to visit the private graves. She walked slowly, calmly, passing the large crosses, the oval headstones, the family plots. Coming to a stop in front of one of the larger crosses, she conjured a bouquet of lilies and laid them gently on her father's grave. Tonks looked, as she always did, at the assortment of flowers and objects people had left. The wizarding community tended to find the people who had lost their lives in the War and pay their respects, no matter whether or not they knew the person. Between an angel teddy bear and a wreath, Tonks set a picture of her family—her, Ginny, and their newborn girl, Evangeline.

Getting up, she sighed and made her way down the path to the other grave she always visited. This one was off in a secluded, wooded part of the cemetery, in the deceased Death Eater area. She stopped in front of a large oval tombstone that read: Bellatrix D Lestrange, and sat down. There were, unsurprisingly, no adornments here, and Tonks wondered, as she always did,

"Why do I keep coming here?"

"I'll tell you a story, if you like," said a voice behind her.

"Hello Aunt Narcissa," Tonks said dully, "I thought I'd be early enough that you wouldn't have to see me…"

"Would you like to hear the story?"

"I suppose."

"There was this boy I knew," Narcissa began, conjuring a chair and sitting next to Tonks, "And his parents were…less than loving—"

"Do I know this boy?" Tonks asked shrewdly.

"You may," Narcissa smirked, "His mother cared for him, but his father was awful to him. He even beat him at times. This boy hated his father and loved his mother dearly, as is to be expected. When he grew older, his mother died, and though he loved her so much, he found he couldn't shed a tear at her funeral. When his father died, he cried for days. You see, he had spent his whole life hating his father so much, that when the man died, his son had no other strong emotion to take the place of the hate. He was empty, you see, because he had put all of his energy into despising one man."

"You're saying I'm empty," Tonks quirked an eyebrow.

"In a manner of speaking," Narcissa said, "You haven't moved on completely from the hate you felt for her during the war. You come back here to make sure that others haven't either."